He sat down at the small dining table and opened the food container as soon as he walked in. I sat across from him, watching the way his mouth moved as he ate, and the way he smiled at me in between bites of food. When he’d finished and was leaning back in his chair, sipping his beer, I smiled.
“What happened with the autopsy report you were waiting on?”
“The medical examiner seems to know what she’s doing, but none of it makes sense,” he admitted, sitting forward. “She says there were no external signs of animal attack, and that the tox screen came back clean. No sign of heart disease or cancer, and everything about him looked normal. Her take was that he’d walked into the cave and sat down to die a natural death. I wasn’t expecting that at all.”
My mind began to race, and I remembered the eerie drive-in movie theater and the activity going on there when I passed on my way into town.
“You look like you have something to say,” Romeo said, one eyebrow raised in question.
I sighed. “You said there were no footprints around the body when you came in.”
“Right. There were footprints from the boys going into the cave, but not actually near the body. Those footprints stopped several feet from the body, and they were obviously much smaller—obvious footprints from a kid that age—not an adult’s. That’s what’s really bugging me.”
“If someone put him in the cave, wouldn’t there be footprints?” I asked, hastening to add, “I mean, could someone have set him down and then brushed away their footprints? I see criminals do that in movies all the time.”
Romeo chuckled around the mouth of his beer bottle. “You watch too much TV, Vincent. If someone goes to the trouble of hiding their murder victim in an old uranium mine, the last thing they’re going to do is bring a broom along to wipe away footprints. Besides, like I said, there was no evidence of a murder. This one is an odd one for sure.”
“Something strange happened on my way into town tonight,” I said.
“What?” He frowned deeply.
I sighed. “Don’t let this freak you out but you know the old drive-in we pass every time we drive here from town?”
“Of course. I look at it every time,” Romeo said.
“What does it look like to you?” I asked.
He cocked his head to the side in that strange way he had, and I suddenly pictured him in unicorn form as he stared at me with dark brown eyes, fringed with those incredibly thick lashes.
Romeo shrugged. “I don’t know… What it’s supposed to look like. A cracked asphalt parking lot with rusty speaker boxes and a large screen that’s been on the wrong side of a paintball gun.”
“Yeah. That’s what it’s always looked like to me until tonight,” I said.
“What happened? What did you see?”
“When I was driving into town, I actually stopped on the side of the road because the place was packed.”
“Packed with what?” Romeo asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Cars! There were wall to wall cars,” I said emphatically.
“Cars? Doing what?” Romeo frowned at me.
“I can’t explain it…they weren’t from this century,” I finally blurted. “They were all from the 1950s and 60s. There were no modern cars. All of them were old…”
He opened his mouth, but I held up my hand.
“Wait. Let me finish. The cars weren’t empty. A movie was playing…some sort of old cartoon like they used to play in between films or at the beginning of a movie. Not only that, there were people.”
“People,” he stated flatly, smirking a little.
“People! The place was filled with ghosts. The cars were translucent, a movie was playing, and little ghost kids and grown adults were walking, running, and hanging around the concession stand. The place was filled with ghosts.”
“What the hell?” Romeo said, reaching up and dragging his hand over his face and giving it a few scrubs of his fingers. “What’s next?”
“Okay, look. There’s more.”
He spread his hands and just smiled at me. “Oh, of course there is. Things get better and better. What happened then? Zombies?”
I chuckled but quickly sobered. Romeo’s expression morphed into a serious one as well. “I am pretty sure I was seeing the whole thing through the eyes of another specter, one removed from the rest.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Romeo asked.
I sighed, determined to make myself clear even though I wasn’t so sure I was right. “A younger ghost stood in the tree line, removed from the scene playing out below,” I said. “This ghost wasn’t bright like the others. They had color, color to their clothing, fresh paintwork in the cars they were sitting in, walking beside. The ghost kids had bright shocks of hair and were laughing. The small child ghost, if that’s what he was, stood separate and dark. You’d probably describe him as having a smoky color. It was honestly the strangest thing.”
“I can picture that,’ Romeo said. “So, this ghost kid—the one who was standing by himself—he was what? Just watching?”
I nodded. “It was like he was longing to be able to participate in what was going on at the drive-in. Like he wanted to join in, but he couldn’t leave his place in the trees. It felt like there was an invisible line he couldn’t cross. I can’t really describe it as anything other than that.”
Romeo was nodding. “So, what makes you think you were seeing the whole scene play out through his eyes?”
“Because after a few minutes, he turned and walked back into the trees. The moment he did, all the activity at the drive-in vanished like it
